Oolite Bulletins

This is now seperated out from CinematicSkies..

I found when leaving the station that every system I was in seemed suddenly a ghost town, so this script corrects that by reflecting the amount of traffic you likely experienced on the way in from the Witch-Point.

Firstly upon launch you will find residual traffic from your initial journey inwards, when starting from a LOAD-GAME that traffic was always absent, so firstly that is corrected.

Secondly having either travelled in and launched again, or from a fresh launch, all the traffic created when exiting Witch-Space is absent or finishing its journey, so a random timer is activated causing traffic to Witch-In at a seemingly realistic rate, and to make their own individual AI choices to either head for the planet, star, or to Witch-On.

That's about it, but if I can get a little more to grips with scripting I would like to add factors for system wealth and government leaning.
Perhaps even in the distant future it would be nice to add some specific new traffic and occurrances for certain system types, such as gypsies in Anarchies.

Thanks to Tricky for contributing some scripting updates, I need my water-wings here

http://www.mediafire.com/download/49oqf ... .5.oxp.zip

Make sure to update your version of CinematicSkies to (at least) 1.1.9 to avoid having this script active twice, not unless you like traffic jams at the station

Available here..

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ffyuk ... .9.oxp.zip

While nothing speaks against creating more traffic, I'd still like to chime in and say that Oolite all by itself does create incoming traffic on the witchpoint-planet route after you launch from the station.

For instance, each trader that launches randomly from the main station and jumps out, triggers another trader to jump in at the witchpoint. This may be hard to notice when there are many ships waiting in the docking queue, because as long as they're not docked, no ship gets launched. Thus, in a weird way, having a lot of traffic close to the station can actually prevent more traffic to be created at the witchpoint.

Eyup
I think a lot of this effect is probably created by OXP traffic additions when Witching-In that are no longer catered for after the moment of entering, so especially in my OXP crammed Ooniverse, the difference to a system when having visited the planet end of the run is very noticeably emptier, thus this OXP adds traffic at the witch point of its own accord whether ships launch from the station or not.
I gave them enough chance/timer variation for there to be quiet and crowded moments, so in some systems you may notice no difference, but in most the increase is certainly there.
I wasn't aware of the launch/Witch-In mechanic so in a way I have inadvertently over-ridden this, I'm guessing that system was kind of taking in to account lower end machines where no more traffic than is necessary is added to, whereas here I have disregarded that in favour of a chance based mechanic, also adding to the sun route/AI choices to improve the impression of individual space-farers making their own descisions.
I wanted there to be moments of tranquility and moments of space-jam the same as there is on the way in.

Yep, all in all the total number of entities per system that vanilla Oolite creates on average is meant to allow for smooth game play on low-end systems. Thus, without OXPs you'll rarely have more than about 80 entities in a system at any given time, and that includes the planet, sun, station, beacons, and most important the asteroids, as well as cargo containers and debris. Which leaves room for a total of about 30-40 ships, many of whom will be escorts and therefore clustered together. Which means that you're not very likely to get the impression of a crowded system.

Tis all interesting to me I may have to create my own AI to cater for Lane-Rage, such as near proximity/collisions triggering a scrap, but with a high tendancy to scarper well before energy levels get dangerous. Maybe even that scrap should 90% of the time begin verbally

ZygoUgo wrote:

Tis all interesting to me I may have to create my own AI to cater for Lane-Rage, such as near proximity/collisions triggering a scrap, but with a high tendancy to scarper well before energy levels get dangerous. Maybe even that scrap should 90% of the time begin verbally

Have a look at  tugs.oxp for inspiration. The Tugger pilots will get verbal when you get too close.

The AI proximity checks were—more or less—created for this OXP.

My Switeck's Shipping OXP also changed the roles for new NPC ships that show up at witchpoint. It also could make the standard shipping lane seem a little less occupied, as some NPC ships could decide to hyperspace again almost immediately after arrival.